


it takes someone bleeding

by zinabug



Series: Lily of-many-names [7]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Family Bonding, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinabug/pseuds/zinabug
Summary: Lily, now immortal, decides to go with Jonny to cause problems on purpose. it backfires.
Series: Lily of-many-names [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962349
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57
Collections: Lilly-of-Many-Names Tales





	it takes someone bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> title from crows feet by the accidentals

“I’m going to go get drunk and start a fight.” Jonny announced, slamming his hands down on the table where a few of the other mechanisms were playing cards. 

“Well, have fun with that” Ashes said. Ivy slipped a card in her sleeve while Ashes was distracted. Everyone cheated at cards except MJE Brian and when Lily was playing, at least until she learned to cheat just as well. 

Jonny nodded. The aurora was docked again, the first time since Lily had died and been mechanized. He needed to get away from the ship, from the others, just needed to break a few bar stools over a few heads and punch a few people. It was therapeutic to have a good bit of violence. 

Jonny was halfway to the seedy part of town before he realized he had a blue coated, rainbow haired shadow. He turned around to see Lily, hands in her pockets. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. 

“Coming with you.” she said. 

“Kid, I’m planning on getting drunk and smashing someone's head in.” he sighed. 

“I’m not a kid, and I want to come.” Lily was standing tall, and he knew that was hurting her. He knew the pain a mechanism brings. 

“You don’t get to come. It’s not safe.” Jonny said. 

“Listen, I just want to spend time with you, without you worrying.” 

“I’ll always worry about you.” he said, sharper then he meant to. 

She blew a lock of hair out of her face. “But you don’t have to.” 

“Not like it’ll stop me.” he became very aware of his heart ticking, and he could feel a ghost of her butterfly light freezing hand touching his chest as she- he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Just let me come.” she said. 

“Fine. you don’t get to get drunk and start a fight though.” Jonny dug a box of cigarettes out of his pocket. 

“I can if I want!” she said. 

Jonny laughed. “Alright, kid. Whatever you say. Let’s go then.” he was determined that he was not going to let her get involved in whatever mess he was planning on getting himself into. 

They were sitting together at the bar, Jonny quietly drinking and glaring, Lily having a conversation with two young men, about her age. Jonny already didn’t like them, although he wasn't sure if it was just his infernal parenting instinct or the fact that one of them was clearly flirting with her. Probably both, really. 

He glared really hard at a person sitting in the corner alone to try and make the feelings go away. They didn’t even notice him. 

Lily’s laugh stopped, and he looked around. She pushed one of them away from her. 

Jonny gave her a look that he hoped translated to  _ hey, do you want me to kill those assholes for you?  _

Lily raised an eyebrow at him. She gave him a look that translated to  _ I can deal with it  _ and punched the asshole in question in the stomach. 

He shrugged, turned around, took a sip of his drink before suddenly whipping around and punching the person next to him in the jaw. 

He wasn’t even very drunk yet, he just wanted some good violence, hand to hand, face to face, not Tim randomly shooting you from a distance with a new weapon or getting poisoned by Raphealla again. 

Obviously, the other person hit him back, leaving him with the taste of blood and oil in his mouth. He picked up a bottle from the table and threw it across the room. 

Lily took the opportunity to properly punch the person who had been flirting with her again, right in the face.  _ Good for her.  _

The bar dissolved into chaos instantly. Jonny was having a great time, breaking a stool over someone’s head and punching a couple other people. 

Lily was very good at hand to hand combat. She had learned from the mechanisms, after all. She knew how to find pressure points and how to hit to break bones and how to just give someone a good ol’ fashioned punch to the face. She knew how to use a gun and a sword and a bow and a really big stick to knock someone’s lights out. 

None of that would help against a knife to the back. 

She had managed to knock him down, smiling with the joy of fighting, feeling her bruised knuckles heal, when everything went white. 

Jonny had turned around to check on her, grinning and spitting out a mouthful of blood, when he saw it. 

Her eyes went wide as they met his, as they realized what was happening, and she was still smiling as she crumpled. 

Standing behind her, holding a bloody knife, was one of the people she had been talking to. His eyes were wide and her blood was on his hands. 

It was soaking through her blue coat, onto the floor, and he  _ knew  _ what had happened. 

His own heart skipped a beat.

_ He knew what had happened.  _

It had happened to him. 

_ Tick. tick.  _

His heartbeat was echoing in his head and neither of them moved. 

He drew his gun and everything was blood and fire. 

There wasn’t anything in his head except for the image of Lily, over and over, falling. He forgot everything. 

Two shots. One for each of them. A match into a cup. A knife to the chest. blood splattering across him, and none of it belonged to him. The taste of oil was stronger now, stronger than the blood. There was a fire, and he didn’t know if he caused it. He didn’t know anything anymore. 

Everyone was dead. 

He was standing in the burned out shell of the bar, and Lily was still face down on the floor, blood drying on the wooden floor. 

The sound he made wasn’t quite a sob, or a scream, but it was strangled and full of pain. 

He dropped his gun. 

Dropping to his knees on the floor next to her, he picked her up, holding her to his chest. Under her coat, he could feel the ridges of her spine, so much sharper now. 

_ She’ll wake up she can’t die anymore.  _

The thought wasn’t even that much of a relief to him. Raph had made her own wings and she had rebuilt Lily’s shattered bones but there was always the nagging worry in him. 

One, that worry had been a hope. 

_ Maybe this time, it won’t work.  _

Now, he had something to live for, and that hope had become a fear pulled from the deep dark human part of him that feared death and leaving Lily alone in the cold world. 

she was an adult now, he had seen her grow from the battered eight year old who had shot him in the chest to the young woman who smiled and sang with them. That didn’t stop her from being his kid. 

Lily coughed, took a shuddering breath, grabbing at his shirt. He pulled her closer to him, letting himself cry. 

“I’m fine.” she whispered. “I’m fine. What happened?” 

Another broken sob was ripped from his chest. 

“I died, didn’t I?” 

He nodded, as she pulled away from him a little to look around and see the rest of the room. 

“You-you did this?” she asked. 

He nodded again. 

He didn’t want to let go of her, but she made him, and the two of them sat on the bar. Jonny opened one of the few unbroken bottles of whiskey and they shared it, watching smoke rise from destroyed tables and walls. 

Jonny was silent and very still. Lily was unused to his silence, normally he was talking or humming or singing or at least tapping his fingers on the table. But now he was quiet, hunched over himself like he was in pain. Lily quietly sipped from her glass and thought about what had happened, about how she felt.

“That’s what happened to me.” Jonny said quietly. “Knife through the heart, and the  _ good doctor _ dragged my corpse back to her lab and  _ ‘fixed’  _ it.” 

Lily rubbed her chest. The knife, long and wicked sharp, had cut clean through. There was blood all over her. 

“I’m sorry.” Jonny said. “So sorry that I couldn’t keep you safe.” 

“I’m fine!” She insisted, for what felt like the millionth time. 

“It’s not about that. You shouldn’t have needed to go through  _ this _ .” He waved a hand around. “Eternity, learning what every way to die feels like.” 

Lily looked at the floor, covered in ash and blood. Eternity was a very big word and she wasn’t quite ready to think about it yet. 

Jonny laughed quietly, bitterly, and took a drink right out of the bottle. 

Lily twisted her bloody hands in her lap as she started to hum quietly. 

Jonny didn’t notice until she started singing. 

“ _ Upon a wave of ghost fire, she strode into the maze,”  _

He put an arm around her shoulders. 

“ _ With six barrels on her pistol and the trigger all ablaze _

_ Vengeance, for her father, was what the stranger sought _

_ But her bullets showed no mercy to the evil that she caught.”  _

They would have made quite the sight to anyone passing through, the two of them sitting on the scorched bar and singing, rocking back and forth slightly, both of them bloody and tattered. 

“ _ Her name was lil, lil lemon _

_ She wore a coat as black as night.”  _

Lily closed her eyes. Eternity was a long way off. 

“ _ Outlaw, monster or demon,  _

_ All fell before her badges blazin’ light.”  _


End file.
